Drug Delivery Systems & Pharmacogenomics

Drug delivery and pharmacokinetics have been important elements of bioengineering practice for many decades. This long-standing interest is now coupled with rapid progress in both micro/nanoscale engineering and biological aspects of drug delivery. In recent years, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries have developed more sophisticated and potent drugs. Many of these agents are proteins or DNA; the therapeutic window for these drugs is often narrow; and toxicity is observed for concentration spikes, which renders traditional methods of drug delivery ineffective. The challenge of drug delivery is therefore, liberation of bioactive drug agents at the right time in a safe and reproducible manner, usually to a specific target site. To address these challenges, bioengineers are designing platforms that are biocompatible, biofunctional, and/or biomimetic. Bioengineering tools that are applied to drug delivery include mass transport, analysis of biological barriers, compartmental models and pharmacokinetics, principles of drug modification.; Biocompatibility/immunology, and micro/nanofabrication. Numerous laboratories at UCSF and UCB offer chances to participate in cutting-edge drug delivery research.